"I'm not saying our game plan was built around playing against him, but at the same time, we respected him tremendously," Roy said. "We knew how special he was. He could turn the game around at any moment. He had a lot of ice time and he was coming back very fast on the ice.

"For our 'D' that we wanted to match with him, it was really demanding. If you played him one night, you didn't want to play the following night because he would tire out all our defense."

O'Reilly's role. Roy said he hoped to meet with fifth-year forward Ryan O'Reilly soon and explain his plans to use MacKinnon as the third-line center and switch O'Reilly to wing on a line centered by Matt Duchene.

"It was the same scenario that Bob (Hartley) did with Peter (Forsberg) and Joe (Sakic) at some point," Roy said. "And Ryan is a great team guy, smart player. I think he will accept it."

Pracey on Jones. Avalanche chief scout Rick Pracey, on board with the selection of MacKinnon with the first choice Sunday, was emphatic that the team remained high on defenseman Seth Jones, who slid to the No. 4 choice.

"My message that I want to communicate 100 percent clear is that it had nothing to do with Seth," Pracey said. "It was a competitive draft. These are all very, very good players. We believe in Seth Jones. His skating ability, his size, his mobility on the back end, his reach — they're elite. My experiences with him and his family on a personal level — flying into Dallas and spending some time there — were good. I'm very fond of Seth Jones and I wish him well. I'm a firm believer that he's going to have a very strong career in the NHL. We have decisions to make, and he was in those decisions right up to the end."

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